The Sunday Haul

Years ago I had watched my first (and only) Rambo movie- First Blood. I just went to the movie, watched Sylvester Stallone, muscles and all, and was awestruck by the fast action though I felt that it was excessively violent. I wasn’t even aware that it was based on a novel. It was long before I got the idea that maybe I could write a screenplay and so was utterly ignorant what a screenplay was and how movies are made.

When I seriously started learn more about writing I read an article in a writing magazine about David Morrell’s book on writing- 'Lessons from a Lifetime of Writing'. Luckily for me someone gave me this book and it was then I learnt that it was David Morrell who had written ‘First Blood’ which was later made into the movie. I came across many novels written by Morrell but not ‘First Blood,’ anywhere. Last Sunday, at Abids, I finally found a good copy of ‘First Blood’ that I got for twenty-five rupees.

One of the few translated novels that I read long ago was Shrilal Shukla’s ‘Raag Darbari’ that my younger brother picked up somewhere. I liked the earthy humor in it and enjoyed reading the book. I resolved to look for the original Hindi version and read it someday. However, till date I was not able to find a copy of ‘Raag Darbari’ anywhere though I have to confess that I did not look for it as earnestly as I should. But last Sunday I found another copy of ‘Raag Darbari’ published by Penguin which was one reason I couldn’t buying it. I got it for only twenty-five rupees which is an incredible price to pay for that title. In fact I bought this book too along with ‘First Blood’ from the same seller who appeared to be someone new to me.

With these two titles I picked up on Sunday my tally of books I bought so far this year crosses the 80 mark.